faith, hope and love

Tag Archives: hope

Not so very far from
the door You stand, You,
source of my life, my strife both.
You stand between here and there,
and yet ‘stand’ is not quite right:
You whom I chance to meet with
the breath of a child, in
the wrinkle of the aged, on
the hard, smooth surface of
a rock – grandfather, grandmother.

I do not know You and yet I know You knowing me.

Come, sit with me a bit.
Let our breath be as one, so when mine
ceases, death is bested by love.
Let our seeing be as one, so that hope
finds a fallowed field seeded with tears.
Let our hearing be as one, so I finally
hear the trees, the stars, singing You,
in my hearing, seeing, breathing
You.

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And then You come to me
again, and again, and again,
slipping Your words into the silence
of my speech. You right and write
my wrongs in strophes of
reconciliation, allowing
my ears to be hallowed
by Your cries; my
eyes to be sanctified by
the sight of Your tears
now made mine.

You are not
content to see
me face to face
but embrace me
from the inside out:
Your presence now my joy,
Your absence now my hope,
my words now my tongue
limping toward
You.

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Last Thursday was spent on the docks. The beginning of October marks the time of year when sailboats in our climes move to the “hard.” We are relatively new to our Marina, and so I had my first experience of seeing about 50 boats move from floating to flying to resting in their “cradle.” The boat club brings in a crane and all day long boats are advanced along the pier, then hugged with straps before being lifted across the sky and nestled into a metal stand designed to handle the large keel that keeps sailboats afloat and stable while the wind propels them forward.

A friend asked me the other day if I feel a little sad on a day such as this. I do feel a little sad, knowing that another season of sailing has come and gone. Yet the day also comes with both nervousness and the relief that comes with seeing Santa Maria safely ensconced in her resting place for another winter.

All of us have these odd moments where we simultaneously experience a mix of emotions. It can make making sense of our experiences complicated. Of course, complication can be a good thing when we are looking at life a little too simplistically! It is easy, too easy to paint life in black and white, whereas our emotions remind us that the circumstances that have led to them tend to be outside of our control. Life is sometimes grey, often a kaleidoscope of colours, but rarely black and white! Emotions, then, are often complicated and uncertain. Add to that the fact that our emotions are usually shaped by memories that are molded by the singularity of our experience, and it is soon clear that we need to accept the complexity and intensity of these feelings. It is not unusual to be happy and sad over the same things; to be afraid and excited together; to feel love and repulsion at the same time. Emotions are complicated and complicating, but a gift of God all the same.

There are so many places in life where we live with these mixed emotions, and as I look back on some of the bigger ones in my life – such as major life changes etc. – I realize that this is a complexity that accompanies us to and into death, experienced paradoxically as both a poison and a balm. We hold our breath in the face of death, just as I did as I saw my boat lifted up out of the water and drifting some 40 feet above the ground across the parking lot before landing safely into the boat storage unit at which point I let my breath out again, and said a prayer of thanks.

There they are lost to us.
We can but hope that
the earth holds them
safe in her womb, where
one day they might be born
anew when muses tap
poets, and kiss
artists, and
set stars
in skies, if not eyes…

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I saw You from afar, and
yet, not so very far away
from my eyes,
looking down now
at my feet. I
found You just
below my gaze,
in my heart, where
you twisted my desire
in Your direction.

I felt a little unsure, a
little at sea – my feet
not up to the feat of
rolling with these waves – and
so I looked up to the horizon,
and there You were again,
Your eyes on me; You smiled
enigmatically, and I knew

I would never be the same again – just
like yesterday, and like
tomorrow too,
I suppose.